Marksmanship Hunter Artifact Traits and Relics

This section of the Marksmanship Hunter guide covers everything about the artifact Thas'dorah: Artifact Traits and which order to select them and relic information. This guide is written by Delirium from the Thrill of the Wild and the Hunting Party Podcast. Updated for the latest patch.

Active Ability

Equipping Thas'dorah grants you the ability , which focuses the wind through your bow to deal a massive amount of damage, creating a wind path that increases the movement speed from your allies inside of it.

Artifact Bonuses:

- When you damage a target below 20% health, you gain 3% critical strike for 6 seconds, stacking up to 30 times.This is a situationally very powerful ability, as in fights with add waves, you can “cherry pick” low health targets to stack up a high Crit buff, and then unload that on your priority target.

- When you , you have a chance of proc'ing an additional attack which hits all targets.

Artifact Traits from Patch 7.2After completing your 35th trait, you'll be able to open 4 new traits, and upgrade all of the 3 level traits to a 4th level.

- Increases damage and stamina by 10% each. This trait is just a flat damage increase.

- This changes the debuff to increase Aimed Shot damage by 3% per rank. This is a decent single target increase.

- Marksmanship Hunters already have a much more reliable way to break snares from , and the dodge chance isn't reliable enough to let you ignore mechanics. However, there are several raid-wide mechanics that can be dodged, so this may be a useful addition to in emergency situations.

- With Windburst fairly high on our priority list, any extra damage from Cyclonic Burst only makes it more valuable.

- A significant Agility buff that should occur on average every 44 seconds. At rank 1, this provides 4000 agility for 10 seconds, and gains an additional 300 agility per rank.

Recommended Build Paths

Because Blizzard has reduced the time it takes to get to 40 Artifact Knowledge significantly in Patch 7.2.5, there is no excuse for showing up to raid without having completed all of your Artifact Traits up until Concordance of the Legionfall. As such, the path you take to complete the weapon is not in the slightest bit important. This is especially true for anyone wanting to play a Hunter, because we Hunters pay our dues, and never show up to raid unprepared.

For those slackers who just refused to do their fair share of preparation, the below is considered to be the most optimal path to unlock your weapon traits, based on the quickest way to do the most damage possible.

From there, you'll go through Windrunner's Guidance to get your second golden trait, Legacy of the Windrunners, as your 20th point, and then go through Precision to get Call of the Hunter on your 24th point, rounding out the last of your golden traits.

From there, you can finish Quickshot and Critical Focus, before putting the last of your Artifact Power into the last two defensive abilities, Healing Shell and Survival of the Fittest.

7.2 Artifact Trait Paths

After completing your 35th trait, you can do a quest which will open up 4 new traits, and the ability to upgrade all of the 3 level traits to a 4th level. Begin by upgrading to 4/4 as soon as possible, as this is by far our largest DPS gain. Next, seek out your highest DPS traits from the old path, and upgrade them to 4/4. This will vary some depending on the type of rotation you use, and whether you want to focus on AoE or Single Target damage. I recommend focusing on traits that affect Aimed Shot first ( and ), as those buffs will multiply with , and will help your priority target damage the most; however, you should think about the type of damage your raid team most needs, and how quickly you'll be able to unlock the more AoE focus traits (like Marked Shot buffs).

Next, finish off your DPS traits. Go through to get , and go up to 4/4 in , , and finally .

After that, work your way through your last Defensive and Utility traits until you can unlock , and prepare for the unobtainable grind of leveling up Concordance.